According to Russian Lieutenant General Viktor Poznikhir, the US is surrounding Russia and China with missile defense systems in order to launch a “sudden nuclear strike” and prevent any retaliation.

The US has said recently it’s installing anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and Romania to prevent Iran from attacking Europe and in South Korea to prevent North Korea from attacking South Korea and Japan.

Poznikhir is suggesting the real reason for these systems is to allow the US to launch a nuclear strike on Russia or China and prevent either nation from retaliating, as their own nuclear missiles would be shot down by the US government’s ABM systems — at least in a best case scenario.

From RT:

The United States is pursuing global strategic domination through developing anti-ballistic missile systems capable of a sudden disarming strike against Russia and China, according to the deputy head of operations of the Russian General Staff.

There is an obvious link between Washington’s prompt global strike initiative, which seeks capability to engage “any targets anywhere in the world within one hour of the decision,” and the deployment of missile launch systems in Europe and aboard naval vessels across the globe, Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznikhir said at a news briefing on Wednesday.

“The presence of US missile defense bases in Europe, missile defense vessels in seas and oceans close to Russia creates a powerful covert strike component for conducting a sudden nuclear missile strike against the Russian Federation,” Poznikhir explained.

While the US keeps claiming that its missile defenses are seeking to mitigate threats from rogue states, the results of computer simulations confirm that the Pentagon’s installations are directed against Russia and China, according to Poznikhir.

American missile attack warning systems, he said, cover all possible trajectories of Russian ballistic missiles flying toward the United States, and are only expected to get more advanced as new low-orbit satellites complement the existing radar systems.

American ABM systems are not only creating an “illusion” of safety from a retaliatory strike but can themselves be used to launch a sneak nuclear attack on Russia.

In a blatant breach of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the standard land-based launching systems can be covertly rearmed with Tomahawk cruise missiles instead of interceptors – and the Pentagon’s denial of this fact, according to Poznikhir, is “at the very least unconvincing.”

Moreover, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed in 1972 with the Soviet Union, allowed it to develop more advanced weapons that can now not only pose a threat to targets on the ground but in space as well.

“In February 2008, the Pentagon demonstrated the possibility of engaging spacecraft with its ABM capabilities,” Poznikhir said. “An American satellite at an altitude of about 250 km was destroyed by a Standard-3 missile, an earlier modification, launched from a US Navy destroyer.”

“Given the global nature of the ABM ships’ deployment, the space operations of any state, including the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, are under threat.”

Russia has repeatedly voiced its concerns over the risk American ABM systems pose to the global balance of power and thus peace and stability, but has consistently been sidelined.

“Within the framework of cooperation, we also proposed jointly to develop a missile defense architecture for Europe, which could guarantee security against the impacts of nonstrategic ballistic missiles,” said Poznikhir.

“However, all Russian initiatives were rejected.”

“In this regard, Russia is compelled to take measures aimed at maintaining the balance of strategic arms and minimizing the possible damage to national security as a result of the United States’ ABM systems expansion.”

“This will not make the world a safer place,” he warned, urging Washington to engage in a constructive dialogue instead of dully repeating that the systems are not aimed at undermining Russia’s or China’s national security.

Seems like a very reasonable theory.

Of course, it’s completely psychotic to want to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia or China and hope you can shoot down every last one of their thousands of nuclear missiles just to maintain US dominance over the world, but the neocons controlling our foreign policy are insane.

Comment: What YouTube has been doing is despicable. Remember this video when the next eejit says we have free press and freedom of speech in this ignominious corporatocracy. The only hope is for other video sharing outlets to take up the slack that YouTube created. We the people deserve freedom from these bloated corporations.

9 May 2017

It has now become crystal clear that the You Tube ‘Adpocalypse’ is just phase one of a far more sinister plan to sabotage successful You Tube channels in order to kill competition, robber Barron style, so that the corporate, legacy and mainstream media can yield more power, control and eyeballs on You Tube. What’s being done to the SGT Report You Tube channel can be quantified by alarming statistics which prove, the fix is in. As John D. Rockefeller famously boasted, “Competition is a sin.”

Taking a cue from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Germany shut down nine of its nuclear reactors. Combined, these nuclear reactors had the capacity of generating enough power for at least 20 million homes in Europe.

But due to the extreme dangers associated with nuclear power, Germany doesn’t want to gamble with the nation’s health. It is better to invest in ventures that are sustainable. The country has an ambitious target in renewable energy.

Sweden hopes to run entirely on renewable energy by 2040. Germany has set this target by 2050, 10 years behind Sweden. Since the target was set, the German government has invested heavily in renewables. The government has also set up what is known as Energiewende, an initiative to transition away from fossil fuels and nuclear power to a low carbon, environmentally sound, reliable and affordable energy supply by 2050.

Although Germany has over 30 years to the deadline it is set to fully transition to renewables; current development appears to suggest the country might reach an earlier target by decades than the original set 2050.

On Sunday, April 30, renewable energy from wind, solar, biomass and hydro power provided a record 85 per cent of Germany’s total energy. According to the country’s energy officials, this was a new record set by the country in its energy sector.

Germany’s public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle reports that energy from coal has fallen to a record all-time low in the nation. The outlet added that coal-fired power stations were only operational between three and four on the afternoon of April 30. The plants generated only eight gigawatts of energy, well below their maximum output of around 50 gigawatts.

Patrick Graichen of Agora Energiewende confirmed the good news to the Australian news outlet RenewEconomy. He said: “Most of Germany’s coal-fired power stations were not even operating on Sunday [April 30]. Nuclear power sources, which are planned to be completely phased out by 2022, were also severely reduced.”

Mr Graichen further added that due to the massive investment in renewables by the German government, he is sure that the country will shut down all of its coal and nuclear plants by 2030.

What happened on April 30 made electricity prices in Germany fall into negative figures. The renewable sources fed so much power into the national grid that supply far exceeded demand. The surplus was then sent to neighboring countries.

This isn’t the first time energy supply has exceeded demand in Germany. In 2015, similar things happened. According to energy experts, Germany needs to start investing in a technology that can store energy for future use, due to how the country is over producing the commodity.

The current overproduction in Germany is being spilled into its neighboring countries such as Poland, Austria and the Czech Republic. Experts have warned these countries that depend on surplus energy from Germany need to speed up the process of generating their own energy as a disruption in power supply in Germany would badly affect them.

Already, grid companies in Germany have started to invest in energy storage infrastructure; they have planned to invest some $24 billion to upgrade networks and modify existing high voltage power lines.

The German auto giant company, Audi — which became the first to use power to gas technology, converting excess electricity into gaseous energy, producing a zero carbon hydrogen gas and converting it into renewable methane, which can be used as an energy source in the future — is said to be making a concerted effort to help store energy in the country. Audi has already built a 6 MW power-to-gas facility in its home, Ingolstadt.

Apart from these ongoing developments in Germany, the country is also planning to do away with fossils in its transportation sector. Last year, the country announced that it will soon start operating hydrogen-powered trains in an effort to affirm its noble objective of boosting clean and renewable energy.

The train, known as Coradia iLint, will be the first train in the world to be powered with hydrogen. Currently, Germany runs around 4,000 trains. All are powered with diesel, polluting the atmosphere as they move along. Coradia iLint is developed by the French rail transport company, Alstom.

According to Alstom engineers, the hydrogen that fuels the train is held in huge battery cells on top of the train. As the hydrogen is mixed and burned with oxygen, it produces remarkable amounts of heat, which in turn, cranks the turbines of the engine of the train for extreme amounts of electricity. The only byproduct from this reaction is water vapor or steam, meaning the train doesn’t pollute the environment.

No matter the position one might take on the issue of sanctions, the fact remains that they caused a decade of tremendous suffering and widespread deaths of Iraqi civilians, many of them children.

While the sanctions placed on Iraq by the United Nations Security Council in the 1990s may be a distant memory for some, it’s critical to remember the shameful aftermath as the Trump administration undertakes the sanctioning of certain specific individuals in Syria. No matter the position one might take on the issue of sanctions, the fact remains that they caused a decade of tremendous suffering and widespread deaths of Iraqi civilians, many of them children.

Iraq Sanctions Led to Grievous Death Toll

The widely-reported number of children who died as a result of the sanctions has been as high as 576,000, although one subsequent report estimated 227,000 and a second approximated 350,000. Chuck Sudetic, a journalist who spent time in Basra documenting how sanctions affected the city, wrote in late 2001 that “According to an estimate by Amatzia Baram, an Iraq analyst at the University of Haifa in Israel, between 1991 and 1997 half a million Iraqis died of malnutrition, preventable disease, lack of medicine, and other factors attributable to the sanctions; most were elderly people or children. The United Nations Children’s Fund puts the death toll during the same period at more than 1 million of Iraq’s 23 million people.” Despite conflicting estimates, each set of figures are staggering and tragic.

The United States Security Council Resolution 661 was adopted in August of 1990 following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, “imposing comprehensive multilateral international sanctions on Iraq and freezing all its foreign assets. Iraq was no longer free to import anything not expressly permitted by the United Nations, and companies were forbidden from doing business with Iraq, with very limited exceptions,” according to David Rieff writing for The New York Times in 2003.

“Government assets abroad were frozen and financial transactions with Iraq were prohibited. The country’s economy collapsed immediately and Saddam blamed the United States. He made himself a hero across the Arab world by defying Washington and refusing to quit Kuwait, even as U.S.-led forces began attacking Iraq by air on January 17, 1991,” Sudetic noted.

“Oil For Food”: Corruption Disguised as Benevolence

In 1995, the U.N. proposed the Oil For Food Program which sought to ease some of the burdens caused by the sanctions by allowing Iraq to sell more oil to pay for humanitarian necessities like food and medicine. While first resisted by Saddam Hussein, who initially claimed that the program violated sovereignty, the program was later initiated and Hussein used the program to his advantage. Slate’s Michael Crowley wrote that Hussein took advantage of the program in three ways: first, by ignoring stipulations and selling oil illegally to Syria, Turkey, and Jordan among others to the one of about $13.6 billion; utilizing “pricing schemes, surcharges, and kickbacks to milk another $7 billion or more from oil buyers and sellers of humanitarian supplies”; and engaging in bribery via “a list of people who were given vouchers to buy Iraqi oil at below-market price—essentially, multimillion-dollar buy-offs.” The program ended abruptly and “subsequent investigations show the program was poorly managed and riddled with fraud,” according to PBS.

“The failure of the program wasn’t just in providing food, medicine, and comfort to the Iraqi people; the failure of the program was also not having strong oversight and checks and balances that would have prevented a small group of people and nations from raping billions — billions — of dollars from the people of Iraq,” former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) told PBS.

Worrisome New Sanctions In Syria

The sanctions imposed on Iraq have been inarguably disastrous, and Oil for Food was known to be an overall failure rampant with corruption that did little to ease the suffering of Iraqi civilians. Syria is no stranger to American-led sanctions, as they have been imposed in the past by the Bush and Obama administrations. But is the United States headed toward repeating history in its newest sanctions on Syrian scientists?

On April 24th, the Trump administration placed sanctions on 271 Syrian government employees in response to the sarin gas attack that killed 80 civilians. “The United States is sending a strong message with this action that we will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons by any actor, and we intend to hold the Assad regime accountable for its unacceptable behavior,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.” The New York Times noted that the sanctions are targeted toward “highly educated Syrian officials with deep expertise in chemistry who were thought to have the ability to travel extensively and possibly to use the American financial system.”

The Associated Press states that “any property or interest in property of the individuals’ sanctioned must be blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them.” Also according to AP, “Three U.S. officials said that the sanctions are part of a broader effort to cut off funding and other support to Syria’s President Bashar Assad and his government amid the country’s escalating civil war. The U.S. blames Assad for a recent chemical attack on Syrian civilians, and responded earlier this month by launching missiles against a Syrian airfield.”

France has joined the United States in assigning responsibility to the Syrian government for the chemical attack, while Russia and Syria have denied that the Assad regime was behind the attack. Former Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), a longtime opponent of sanctions, continues to question the United States’ assertion that Assad gassed his people. Members of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of former U.S. intelligence officials, have repeatedly urged President Trump to carefully re-evaluate all aspects of the incident and his position on retaliation. On Saturday, the group criticized Defense Secretary James Mattis’ assertion of there being “no doubt” that the Syrian government is “retaining” chemical weapons, noting that Mattis sounded quite similar to Vice President Dick Cheney when he proclaimed there was “no doubt” that Hussein possessed WMD’s.

“In the case of Syria, the ‘no doubt’ standard Mattis has employed does not meet the ‘reasonable man’ standard. Given the consequences that are attached to his every word, Secretary Mattis would be well advised not to commit to a “no doubt” standard until there is, literally, no doubt.” — Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

While the newest issue of sanctions on Syrian government workers is not nearly as extensive as those placed on Iraq in the 90’s, the American people are being told the same story about the Assad regime as they were told about the Hussein regime: that dictators are in possession of dangerous weapons and must be stopped. But what must be stopped are hurried military retaliations and intensified meddling in foreign affairs that pose no imminent threat to the United States. As deplorable as some actions overseas have been, the U.S. government is once again indicating its eagerness to participate in the further battle to weaken Assad- an eerily familiar mission, and one that President Trump once promised the public that he would avoid.

“Wouldn’t it be a shame if millions of people called this hotline to report their encounters with aliens of the UFO-variety.”

The Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE), launched by ICE, to maintain a hotline for victims of illegal alien crime to call for support and assistance, is now active. However, the Trump administration has recently blasted pranksters trolling the line who are reporting on a different type of illegal alien – the UFO variety.

The hotline has been jammed with trolls and hoaxers reporting on ALF sightings and those of Superman. Those on Twitter also took to the platform, using the hashtag #AlienDay to encourage others to call the VOICE number designed by the government to report illegal aliens – to replace the calls with UFO sightings.

ICE officials have told FOX News that significant delays have been experienced due to the increase in hoax calls, and said it was a waste of government resources. “Secretary Kelly made clear in his announcement Wednesday that this phone line is to be dedicated for the use of victims seeking information and resources,” ICE told Fox.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly also said of the VOICE hotline that it was designed to help victims of crime conducted by illegal aliens. “They are casualties of crimes that should never have taken place—because the people who victimized them often times should not have been in the country in the first place,” he said.

However, Alexander McCoy’s April 26th tweet gathered more momentum than he anticipated. The former Marine and now current Columbia University political science student had tweeted in response to the opening of the VOICE phone line:

“Wouldn’t it be a shame if millions of people called this hotline to report their encounters with aliens of the UFO-variety.”

It seemed online internet goers needed no further encourage to report their sightings of little green men.

.

McCoy told Washington Post that he hoped the “pranking” would ultimately lead to a shutdown of the hotline and saw it as a form of civil disobedience against Trump’s treatment of immigrants.

“We’ve been calling our members of Congress,” McCoy said. “We’ve been ranting at our members of Congress for not showing up at town halls for so long. This isn’t all about what outrageous thing that Trump has done now. We have power to stop things. We have power to speak out – to show that there are things that we won’t accept.”

McCoy also tweeted: “VOICE exists ONLY to collect anecdotes for Trump and his allies to demonize and dehumanize (our) immigrant neighbors and families.”

McCoy continued, “There is no reason to create a special office dedicated to collecting stories of just perpetrators from a particular group,” he said. “None. And doing so proves that VOICE has nothing to do with caring for victims, doesn’t center victims, is just a racist propaganda tool.”

Americans still believe that THEY won WW2. They did not. Russia was instrumental in Germany’s defeat.

And we won’t even talk about the whining others who claim they were the primary victims.

“In terms of casualties, around 419,000 Americans and 451,000 British people were killed in World War II. And though this is a sacrifice that deserves to be honored, when compared to the 26 million Soviets and Russians who perished it pales by comparison.”

The historic importance of the Soviet Union’s role in crushing fascism in the Second World War cannot be overstated. It is why the annual Victory Day commemoration, marked by Russians and friends of Russia all over the world on May 9, is so significant.

The epic sacrifice of the Russian-Soviet people in defeating Hitler’s Nazi war machine, a military force more powerful and seemingly invincible than any the world had seen hitherto, is still breathtaking over seven decades on.

As US historian Peter Kuznick writes: “Up to [D-Day, June 1944], the Soviet Union had almost singlehandedly battled the German military. Until the invasion of Normandy, the Red Army was regularly engaging more than two hundred enemy divisions while the Americans and British together rarely confronted more than ten. Germany lost over 6 million men on the eastern front and approximately 1 million on the western front and in the Mediterranean.”

In terms of casualties, around 419,000 Americans and 451,000 British people were killed in World War II. And though this is a sacrifice that deserves to be honored, when compared to the 26 million Soviets and Russians who perished it pales by comparison. That said, both Britain and the United States deserve huge credit for the tons of vital supplies, weapons, and materiel they contributed to the Soviet war effort, evidence that cooperation between the capitalist West and communist East was possible when faced with a genocidal enemy bent on slaughter and destruction.

Hitler’s war aims and Allied appeasement

In truth, Hitler never wanted a war with Britain or the United States. The fascist dictator was a staunch admirer of the British Empire; he was awed at the ability of this small maritime nation to control India, despite the subcontinent dwarfing it in size and population.

“I, as a man of Germanic blood, would, in spite of everything, rather see India under English rule than under any other,” Hitler wrote in ‘Mein Kampf’ (My Struggle), his infamous political manifesto. It should not be forgotten either that Hitler’s admiration for Britain was widely reciprocated in London, where pro-Nazi sentiment was endemic among the country’s elite, up to and including the royal family.

The British Empire was a model for Germany’s future expansion and colonization of Eastern Europe and Russia. Under Hitler’s perverse racial worldview, the Slav peoples, like the Jews, were ‘untermenschen’ (subhuman) whose land he coveted as ‘lebensraum’ (living space) for the German and Aryan race. Combined with his hatred of Bolshevism, his primary military and ideological objective was the destruction of ‘Judeo-Bolshevism.’

“The sacred mission of the German people [is] to assemble and preserve the most valuable racial elements…and raise them to the dominant position…All who are not of a good race are chaff.”

The invasion of the Soviet Union on June 21, 1941 did not take Stalin or the Soviet Union by surprise, as Western historians have erroneously claimed. Nor was the Soviet leadership under any illusions when it came to a future war with Germany. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 was entered into by Moscow after attempts to forge a collective security alliance with Britain and France were rebuffed. With this in mind, Stalin had every reason to believe, especially after the Allies gave Czechoslovakia to Germany on a plate with the 1938 Munich Agreement, that London and Paris were eager to see Hitler attack Russia next. As Geoffrey Roberts writes, “Stalin did not believe that the British and French were serious about fighting Hitler; he feared, indeed, that they were manoeuvring to get him to do their fighting for them.”

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact bought Moscow invaluable time in which to arm and prepare for the war with Germany that the Soviets knew was certain. However, Stalin believed it would not take place until the spring of 1942, given that Hitler was now at war with Britain after his invasion of Poland, and given that the Nazi dictator had long railed against repeating Germany’s mistake of becoming embroiled in a war on two fronts, as it had in World War I.

Operation Barbarossa and Stalin’s leadership

The initial success of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, was astounding, involving huge encirclements and the destruction of Red Army divisions and formations deployed close to Russia’s western borders. Hitler and his generals had planned for a short and ferocious war against what they believed was a badly organized and led Red Army, and in those first few weeks it was an analysis that appeared to be accurate. “The German Wehrmacht must be prepared to defeat Soviet Russia in one rapid campaign,” Hitler set out in a military directive. “The mass of the [Red] army stationed in Western Russia is to be destroyed in bold operations involving deep and rapid penetrations by panzer spearheads, and the withdrawal of combat-capable elements into the vast Russian interior is to be prevented.”

Most Western observers did not believe that the Soviet Union would recover from its initial losses. Indeed, it seemed by the end of November 1941 that the fall of Moscow was imminent, as the Germans approached to within view of the Kremlin’s spires.

Here the role of Stalin’s leadership came to the fore. First, he took the decisive gamble to redeploy nine divisions from the Far East and Russia’s contested border with Japan, deciding that the Japanese would no longer attempt to invade, having mounted an attack on the United States and British forces in the Pacific instead. Second, he appointed General Zhukov to organize the defense of Moscow. Third, and most importantly, despite ordering an evacuation of the city by government departments, Stalin chose to remain, thus inspiring the troops and Moscow’s citizens with the determination to repel the enemy come what may.

What followed is legendary. The Soviet counteroffensive at the gates of Moscow began on December 5, 1941, with Stalin reviewing Red Army troops as they marched through Red Square on their way to the battle as part of that year’s annual commemoration of the Russian Revolution on November 7.

Remarkable endurance and achievement

The Battle of Moscow was the first of many epic battles that now belong to legend. It was followed by the Battle of Stalingrad (August 23, 1942–February 2, 1943); the Siege of Leningrad (September 8, 1941–January 27, 1944); the Battle of Kursk (July 5, 1942–August 23, 1943): Operation Bagration (June 22–August 19, 1944); and the Battle of Berlin (April 16–May 2, 1945).

One man who understood the Red Army’s role in crushing the fascist juggernaut was Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill. In a speech to the House of Commons in August 1944, he observed: “It is the Russian armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the Germany army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being … that would have been able to maul and break the Germany army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet armies.”

No people have endured what the Russian people endured between 1941 and 1945. And no other people have achieved what they achieved in liberating Europe from the tyranny of fascism.

John Wight has written for newspapers and websites across the world, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal. He is also a regular commentator on RT and BBC Radio. John is currently working on a book exploring the role of the West in the Arab Spring. You can follow him on Twitter @JohnWight1

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.